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John Shepard (ME3)
John Shepard, the protagonist of Damo's Mass Effect LPs, returns in Mass Effect 3. He looks slightly different in this installment - in real life due to an import glitch, in-story due to plastic surgery - but he has the same personality and beliefs as his previous incarnations. Biography The Reapers Arrive Six months had passed since the events of Mass Effect 2. For blowing up the Batarian colony, the Normandy was grounded and Shepard was relieved of command. Only the support of Anderson, now an admiral in the Alliance navy, kept him out of the brig. All Shepard could do was shake his head in frustration at the lack of preparedness for the Reaper invasion. Then the day came. Shepard was called before the Defense Commitee just as the Reapers started to attack the Earth. The red-tapers asks the one-time commander what to do, to which he answered "We fight or we die." Almost immediately after, a Reaper hovered down and blasted the chamber with a large blast. Only Anderson and Shepard survived this attack. Armed with only pistols, the pair hurried to reach the Normandy, which was being prepared by Lieutenant-Commander Ashley Williams. After several intense firefights against Husks and new Batarian "Cannibals", the Normandy arrived to pick them up. However, Anderson decided to stay behind and help the resistance. He ordered Shepard to leave without him and gather as much help as he could, even from the Council and Anderson's diplomatic replacement, Udina. Shepard retorted that he didn't have to take orders from him anymore, having been stripped of rank. However, Anderson just tossed Shepard back his dog tags, telling him to consider himself reinstated. On the grim sight of a shuttle carrying a young boy being shot down by a Reaper, the Normandy left Earth to seek help. The Prothean Archives Before leaving the system, however, he received a garbled message from Admiral Hackett, requesting him to visit the Mars Archives, apparently concerning Dr. Liara T'Soni and a way to stop the Reapers. Upon reaching Mars, the trio of Shepard, Ashley, and new recruit James Vega found the place attacked by Cerberus forces. Ashley wanted answers from Shepard, given his past history with the organization, but he vehemently denied any contact since the destruction of the Collector Base. Upon making their way inside, they met up with Liara as she finished off her Cerberus pursuers. She revealed that, with Hackett's help, she had gained access to the Prothean Archives and discovered blueprints for an anti-Reaper weapon. Unfortunately, Cerberus was after it as well, hence the attack. After sending Vega to cover the exits and secure the shuttle, Liara joined the group in the fight to the archives. Along the way, they discovered that Cerberus was aided by one Dr. Eva Core, a researcher who joined only the week before. The tram station on the way to the archives proper was guarded by an automated turret, but the team easily evaded it. Because the tram was locked down, Ashley came up with the idea of trick Cerberus via helmet-to-helmet communications into reactivating it. A surprising and gruesome discovery was made after opening one of their helmets - the soldiers within looks very similar to Husks. Ashley once again questioned Shepard's revival, but acknowledged that nothing he said would be enough to convince her. Her plan worked, and Shepard and company handled the team coming to investigate. Cerberus got the drop on them as they crossed, disabling their tram and assaulting them via another. However, Shepard's team won and simply hijacked the Cerberus tram. Reaching the archive, a hologram of the Illusive Man appeared. He explained that his plan all along was to discover a way to control and dominate the Reapers, rather than destroy them. Shepard considered this a deluded plan and ignored him. However, Dr. Eva Core uploaded the data from the archives to Cerberus, removing it before Liara could download it. She almost escaped, but Vega brazenly rammed her shuttle with his own, knocking her out of the sky. However, Eva survived, bursting from the wreckage as a synthetic humanoid and gravely injuring Ashley. Shepard took her down, however, and took both Eva's body and Ashley before the Reapers arrived. Return to the Citadel After updating Admiral Hackett, the Normany arrived at the Citadel. Ashley was rushed to a hospital while the rest met up with Captain Bailey, now a Commander. Liara went ahead to meet with Udina, Vega wandered off to play tourist, and then Bailey left to handle a situation at the embassy quarters. Right off the bat, Shepard was henpecked by a woman named Diana Allers, who turned out to be a military news reporter. She requested to join the Normandy for the full scoop, but ever disdainful of her ilk, Shepard shot down her request, using the Normandy's stealth aspect as precedence. Making his way to Huerta Memorial, he ran into the familiar faces of Doctors Michel and Chakwas. After a brief catch-up, Chakwas rejoined the Normandy's crew. Once Michel updated Shepard on Ashley's condition, he checked in on her and offered some words of encouragement to the unconscious soldier. Following that, Shepard made his way to the embassy area, which also contained the C-Sec office. Apparently Bailey's problem was Khalisah al-Jilani kicking up a fuss about wanting to see the Council, which she was ultimately denied. The meeting with the Council proved as fruitless as expected. The other races wanted to secure their own borders first, particularly the Turians, having lost their homeworld Palaven. It didn't help that the new Council, save Udina, was wary about supporting the humans for sacrificing the previous Council. While Shepard and Udina, in a rare case of mutual agreement, vented out their frustrations, the Turian Councilor offered Shepard a ray of hope. If Shepard could extract Palaven's Primarch, Fedoran, the Turians might provide the support he asked for. Additionally, Shepard was reinstated to Spectre status and the resources it came with. Udina agreed to continue talks and see if the other races would come around. Exploring The Normandy After another encounter with the aggressive Khalisah, who actually intended to counter-attack after dodging Shepard's initial punch, the commander made his way back to the Normandy to get some rest. His sleep, however, was disturbed by nightmares of the boy who died in the shuttle explosion while leaving Earth. After speaking with Liara and being told not to blame himself, Shepard was introduced to his new Comm Specialist, Samantha Traynor, who was among the team retrofitting the Normandy. After getting a quick rundown of the updates, Admiral Hackett called him up, got updated, and requested Shepard take any help he could get. Despite the rundown, Shepard still wanted to explore the retrofits and speak with the crew. Joker was his usual self, joking about calling up the Council just to hang up on them (for old time's sake). Traynor took up Kelly's spot and was still adapting to life on the Normandy. She did not have time to pack when they left, and while Shepard offered to provide necessities, he drew the line at replacing her 6000 credit toothbrush. Moving down to the crew quarters, he was surprised to find a wall dedicated to the crew he'd lost over the years, including Kaiden Alenko, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, and the crew who died when the original Normandy was destroyed. In the life support area, where Thane used to be, Shepard recovered the model of the Destiny Ascension, which apparently had been removed during the retrofit. Miranda's former office was now Liara's lab, complete with the info drone from the Shadow Broker's ship, now called Glyph and able to recognize Shepard as a seperate entity. Liara was busy with work, but the pair made sure to affirm their continued relationship. After a quick medical exam with Dr. Chakwas, Shepard moved down to Engineering. The SR-1's chief engineer, Adams, was back in charge. He apologized for not backing Shepard while Cerberus was supporting him, and Shepard assured him that his current support was all that mattered. Once Engineer Adams gushed a bit on the SR-2's construction, Shepard collected another model from the ship's bowels - Sovereign, this time. Down to the Shuttle Bay, Shepard found the Quarian model, examined the new weapons area, and spoke with James Vega. The pair spared in a fistfight while Shepard learned his backstory, having lost his squad recovering intel on the Collectors, which proved ultimately useless since Shepard beat them without it. Winning the fight, Shepard put in his two cents, speaking against any death wish tendencies he might have (shuttle crash and whatnot). Lastly, Shepard made his way to his personal quarters, where he was horrified to find his pet hamster missing from. However, a number of messages demanded his attention first. Most were formalities and extraneous details, but one particular message caught his eye. Secret of Eden Prime Cerberus had taken up operations on Eden Prime, having discovered something related to the Protheans. Nostalgia, investigative curiousity, and anti-Cerberus sentiment prompted Shepard to focus on this particular lead. Eden Prime had already fallen under Reaper control, though like Earth, a resistence movement was underway. While exploring the empty colony near the dig site, Shepard found evidence that Cerberus was abducting the colony's youth for their own nefarious purposes; Liara agreed to distribute this information to rally the Eden resistence to their side. Amazingly, what Cerberus uncovered was not a Prothean artifact, but an actual Prothean. Not a mutated Collector, but an original Prothean alive in stasis, having avoided the Ilos fate of death by power loss. That said, Cerberus damaged the pod while excavating it, meaning it had to be opened properly to avoid killing the occupant. As the team planned their next move, Cerberus forces attacked. After clearing out several Cerberus attack teams and recovering more intel pertaining to the Eden Prime resistence, Shepard and company made their way to the stasis-unlocking lab. Thanks to his Prothean Cipher, Shepard made sense of the garbled mess Cerberus was working with, receiving images of the Prothean resistence and how the stasis pods were opened. At the other console, learning the proper opening signal, Shepard had another vision, learning that they intended to survive their Reaper cycle and rebuild their empire by the time the Reapers returned. Cerberus attempted to stop them several more times, including retracting the bridge (which proved rather futile, since they simply hopped into the gap and climbed up some ladders) and deploying a heavy mech. The latter proved a particularly tough fight, Shepard even running out of ammo, but the team ultimately prevailed. Opening the pod, the occupant did not take his situation very well, forcing them back biotically. Making physical contact with Shepard, he absorbed the human language while Shepard saw the last moments before the Prothean entered stasis. While not exactly pleased by the "primitives" that saved him, he was willing to help fight the Reapers and work with the Normandy. Despite Admiral Hackett's hopes, the Prothean did not have information on the Catalyst device. He was not a scientist, but a soldier. Those with priority for surviving stasis were embodiments of various traits, like bravery and cunning; the survivor's was "vengeance," with no other purpose beyond seeing the Reapers destroyed. Shepard reassured him that they shared the same goal, but the Prothean sensed doubt in him. Afterwards, Liara hopefully probed the alien for information, learning about the Prothean/Reaper war and their memory-through-touch abilities, even if his haughty attitude was against her expectations. After learning his name was Javik, Shepard and Liara left the Prothean to contemplate everything. Category:Protagonists Category:Characters Category:Mass Effect Category:Mass Effect 2 Category:Mass Effect 3